This remarkable four-movement, 48-minute work for solo violin, orchestra, and cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer) packs quite a wallop. Composer John Adams explains that he was inspired to challenge the legend of Scheherazade (and Rimsky-Korsakov’s) after seeing an exhibit at The Museum of the Arab World and realizing how women were–and are–abused in the Middle East.
Here Scheherazade, personified by the violin, is in combat with her oppressors (the orchestra), and she is one strong character–intrepid, empowered, and still, at least in the second movement, alluring. The orchestra is mostly rambunctious and squally while the solo violin tends to play lyrically above it. The recording occasionally allows the former to drown out the latter, but the orchestra has its lyric moments as well and the power struggle is clear.
The work’s four movements are like tone poems with non-specific, non-linear programmes. Their titles tell the stories: I) Tale of the Wise Young Woman/Pursuit by the True Believers; II) A Long Desire (love scene); III) Scheherazade and the Men with Beards; IV) Escape, Flight, Sanctuary. Wonderfully–and perversely–there is nary a hint of the sexy, fake Orientalism that has been the byword of “musical tales of the middle-east” throughout musical history. There’s more clear-and-present menace than veils.
The first movement begins in a jumpy, anxious fashion and the orchestration is thick, with the cimbalom adding an undertone of creepy exoticism. Leila Josefowicz’s violin laments, but is thrashed by an orchestral cacophony–the True Believers. The “Love Scene” burns with sensuality and longing, with chords like heartbeats, and its final moments are a gorgeous song on the violin with the strings offering a peaceful cushion as well.
The mood is broken in the “Men With Beards” section. These guys are angry and wrangling and the orchestral writing is at its most angular and aggressive; Josefowicz has a bit of trouble being heard in the mix, and I sensed that this might be what Adams wanted. In the last movement Scheherazade escapes–from the mad brass, with wild woodwinds in pursuit–but is surrounded in the middle by those nasty strings again. Any peace and freedom may be temporary.
What an odd work! It isn’t particularly beautiful, and the storytelling may be sketchy (Adams isn’t attempting a Symphonie fantastique), but it’s a riveting, somewhat cinematic work that should be heard. And I can’t imagine a finer performance from either soloist or orchestra, all under the fine watch and leadership of conductor David Robertson. Frankly, the world needed a new, revised version of this flawed paradise, and this may just be it.
